


Hidden treasure in the changing room

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [11]
Category: Glee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 14:08:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6156097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leo is running errands alone with the twins, when Harper suddenly starts to cry. A treasure has been lost and retrieving it becomes essential to the family's wellbeing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hidden treasure in the changing room

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is a spin-off sequel for Broken Heart Syndrome. This means that, despite not being properly set after BHS (but that's only because BHS is probably never going to have a proper ending and we'll keep talking about these people forever), it depicts things happening way late in the 'verse, and that may be on varying degrees of spoiler.

Drama – not to say _shit_ – hits the fan while they are already in the car and quite away from the mall, which is of course the worst possible moment it could happen. There must be an universal parental law that states that the more things you have to do, the more likely it is that your children will be a pain in the ass. The most important corollary to this law is that even the best, most educated and unproblematic kid will turn into the spawn of the devil and suddenly make you regret having children at all. Considering that Harper is already a handful in one of her quiet days, the moment her first scream starts, Leo knows that he will want to sell her at the black market at the end of the day.

Today is not the best of days for a tantrum. It never really is – because he hates tantrums – but sometimes he has enough patience to handle them. Today, though, he run all out of it by seven in the morning. Blaine is out of the city for about a week, which means later he won't even be able to complain with him about the bad day is having. And, as if this wasn't enough, he finds himself facing an endless list of chores that he's been postponing for the past two months and that urgently need his attention now.

He has to pick up Blaine's suits from the dry-cleaner for some award ceremony or other he already forgot about. He had forgotten the suits too, until his phone sent him a reminder. Then, he needs to go grocery shopping, because he's a wizard in the kitchen, but even he can't cook a meal with two eggs and the sad remains of a celery. Plus, Logan was devastated this morning to find out his favorite corn flakes were all gone, and Leo doesn't want to repeat the dreadful experience of explaining to a sleepy three year old kid that cereal boxes don't magically refill themselves overnight. Next, he has a bunch of calls to make, one of which to his editor, who's been trying to reach him for days. Leo knows that what the man wants are pages that he didn't even begin to write, so it's going to be a very awkward conversation. And, finally, there's the plumber, coming today of all days, to repair the sink of the bathroom downstairs. This is especially annoying because house issues are Blaine's field. He's the one who knows how things work and why they're not working anymore, he knows how to speak to the repair people. All Leo will be able to say to the man is that _the sink leaks, I guess_ in a very hesitant voice as the man sighs and shakes his head.

But before he could even start doing all these things, he had to take the twins to the mall and buy them some new clothes for preschool, since it starts next week and they outgrew everything they owned during the summer. It took him forever to find clothes he liked that he knew Blaine would like too and, finally, that the twins wouldn't refuse to wear. Considering he likes sporty clothes, Blaine loves a more classy style and what the twins find suitable changes randomly from one moment to the next, that left him with a very small range of clothes to choose from. Trying them on was a war, with Logan running around the shop when Leo was with Harper, and Harper systematically choosing clothes from every single shelf while Leo was with Logan.

Leo left the mall already hating the world and his fatherhood, he doesn't need any more drama. And yet, here it is. 

“Harper, why are you screaming?” He asks her, as he pulls over. He turns around to look at her seating in her baby seat. Her brother, in the baby seat right next to hers, is looking at her quite puzzled. They do everything together, but he doesn't understand why she's crying, so he's clearly wondering if he should start too.

“Take me back to the shop,” Harper says, ordering as she says almost everything since the day she started talking properly.

“We've just been there, honey. We can't go back, we have a lot of things to do today, remember?” Leo tries to be sweet with her. Sometimes kids don't really want to be annoying, they are just tired and don't know any other way to show it.

But she clearly wants to turn him murderous because she starts screaming even harder. “I need to go back to the shop,” she insists. She's crying so hard that her face is red and she's having trouble breathing. It's not just a tantrum, it's a mental breakdown. “Let's go back to the shop!”

Leo sighs, summoning all the patience he can find. “Harper, we can go back another day,” he tries to explain. “Maybe even this week end. The shop will still be there, I promise.”

“It's going to be too late,” she wails. “I need to go back now!”

The contrast between her tiny voice and her perfect grammar would be cute if she wasn't screaming like an eagle and looking like a demon from the most horrific circle of hell. “I won't go anywhere if you don't stop crying,” Leo says, seriously. “You know the drill. You don't get anything by being whiny...”

“Because whiny people are annoying,” Logan says, finishing the sentence and proudly so. Leo taught them to speak like normal people whenever they need to tell him something, and they usually do. It's one of Leo's greatest achievement in his parenting career.

Harper's crying stops suddenly as it began – that's the power of baby's handy crying. What is left is a baby girl very red in the face with two strategically arranged fat tears on her chubby cheeks. “I need to go back,” she repeats, hiccuping. Now that the situation seems calmer and he doesn't have to decide if he has to cry or not, Logan turns to look at Leo. His pacifier covers half his face.

“Can I know why?” Leo asks.

“I forgot my treasure,” Harper says. Logan seems to grasp the gravity of the statement before Leo does, and he opens his mouth in shock. His pacifier drops. 

“What treasure?” Leo asks again. 

“My treasure!” Harper screeches.

“It's in the bag,” Logan offers, trying to be helpful. Harper looks at him, but for once she seems grateful for her twin brother's support.

Leo suddenly realizes what his children are talking about. Two weeks ago his sister Tana came to visit and brought them presents: a little bear figurine for Logan – whose current obsession are forest animals – and a little green bag with a handful of toy butterflies and lady bugs for Harper, who currently believes herself to be one of the fairy folk, and so she likes to adorn herself like one. She loved the butterflies and lady bugs of course, but strangely enough, the little green bag became her most prized possession. It happens so often that the kids just elect one toy or the other as their favorite toy of the moment that Leo didn't take much notice of the latest one. But she did started to take the bag everywhere she went.

“Was there something in the bag?” Leo asks. Harper nods, eagerly. “And what is inside the bag, honey?”

She doesn't answer right away. She hiccups again once or twice, but she stopped crying a while ago, so that's just an automatic gesture. 

“Harper?” Leo urges her. His daughter is always very eager to talk – especially because she already deems herself a refined speaker – so when she's quite, it always means something happened. Not necessarily something she did, but something. In any case, it's always something bad from Leo's point of view. “What did you put in the bag, honey? I'm sure we can buy a new one.”

She shakes her head, looking at him with big teary eyes. Leo really starts to worry. Suddenly, what was just a tantrum seems to be heading toward a tragedy that he hadn't foreseen and that he can't even begin to fathom. “Okay,” he sighs, trying to remain calm. He unbuckles his seat belt and turns properly towards her, almost kneeling on the seat. “Then, what was it?”

She seems to ponder if she should keep quiet or not, and then she looks down. “A ring,” she says.

Leo doesn't know what he was expecting, but it was definitely not this word. Harper has an army of plastic rings – all of them replaceable with a few bucks – and a couple of his old superhero rings that he gave to her because they got damaged during his last move. Her favorite is the Green Lantern's one, which would fit perfectly in the little green bag, that's why he thinks about it. “Was it the green ring I gave you?” He asks to make sure. “We can order another one, don't worry about that.”

“No”. She says just that, no. And it's such a sad, resigned word that it fills Leo with dread.

“Honey, whatever it is, I need to know,” Leo tries another approach. Usually, talking to her in a grown-up way seems to work.

In fact, she looks up at him with a sorrowful expression on her face. “It's daddy's ring.”

For a very long moment – one that leaves Logan quite puzzled, because he doesn't know what to think about his father suddenly frozen in the car – Leo has no idea of what ring she's talking about. Blaine doesn't disdain jewelry, but he's more of a cufflinks man than a rings one. In fact, Leo doesn't remember him wearing a ring except for his wedding ring. “Honey, what daddy's ring?” He inquires.

“The one in the big black box”, she answers.

That's when Leo pales. “You mean the one that was in the first drawer of his dresser in our bedroom?” He asks again. A part of him is telling him that Harper can't possibly know where that box was, another bigger part of him is frantically hoping that she indeed doesn't know. 

But she nods. Oh God, she nods. 

The ring in the big black box is not just a ring. It is _the_ ring. Actually the only ring in the house they can't quite possibly replace, their weeding rings included. It's the Dalton ring, emblazoned with the school's crest. They make one different every year, a limited edition dedicated to the number of students that will be qualified to wear it. In Blaine's specific case is Warbler-related, so it's basically irreplaceable. One of a kind. Well, one of a very few kinds. Blaine cares for it more than he care for his life. It's his pride and joy and he treats it as a family heirloom. It's the one thing he will give to his most worthy child or something like that.

“Harper! Why did you take it?” Leo says, in shock. 

“I liked it,” she justifies herself.

If I took everything I like, Leo thinks, you'd have at least three fathers. “It was not yours to take, let alone lose in a mall,” he says, turning back towards the steering wheel and buckling his seat belt. “That ring is very, very important for daddy.”

“I know.”

“Where do you think you lost it?” Leo asks, pulling away from the curb and heading towards the mall again.

“I don't know,” she says this time.

“Well, try to think. Did you have it when we went to the bathroom?” Leo asks, urging her. This is not just a disaster, it's the apocalypse. The one thing that will destroy them all. Maybe Blaine will not kill his children over a ring – maybe – but the shit storm that will hit them all will be so big to overshadow every other shit storm in the history of the family, and they had quite a few of them.

“Yes,” Harper says. She seems quite sure, silver lining. But it's Logan who unveils the mystery.

“It's in the changing room,” he says calmly as if his sister hadn't been crying and screaming desperately for that information just a few moments ago.

“What?” Leo asks.

“Where we put the new clothes on”, Logan says. “It's on the chair.”

“Yes!” Harper screams excitedly, remembering too. “I left it there to try the white skirt.”

Leo speeds up, hoping there's no police officer ready to add tragedy to tragedy. “Logan, why didn't you say anything sooner?”

“I don't know,” he shrugs. He only has two moods: being completely in a panic or not being fazed at all. Sometimes he makes Leo wonder. But he's got no time to ponder Logan's emotional situation right now, he has to find the ring before someone else does. He parks the car randomly and enters the clothing shop running like a madman, dragging the twins along. One of the clerks meet him halfway on the way to the changing rooms. “Sir, can I help you?” But he dodges her so swiftly as he never did on a football field. His dad would be proud. He's got no time for explanations. His kids try to keep up, but Leo is very tall and they have little legs, so at some point he lets them go and keeps running alone.

But when he reaches the changing room, it's empty. Panicking, he tries them all, but there are no little green bags anywhere. There's nothing anywhere. All the changing rooms are tragically empty. When the clerk reaches him, bringing his children with her, she finds him sitting on the floor of the first changing room, defeated.

“Sir, is this what you were looking for?” The cute clerk asks, the little green bag dangling from her long fingers. 

Leo slowly looks up, and as he takes in the little bag with his precious contents, hope comes back to him. Suddenly, his divorce is not an inevitable consequence of this dreadful day. “Yes!” He exclaims, scrambling to his feet and receiving the bag from the amused clerk's hands.

“We found it after you left and we figured you would be back for it,” she explains with a beautiful smile.

“Thank you!” Leo says, fighting the urge to hug his savior. “You just saved a marriage.”

She chuckles. “I will add that to my resume,” she jokes.

“I'll be glad to write your references,” Leo promises. As they leave the store, he thinks that all the other things he had to do can wait. This was enough excitement for at least one week. As they get back in the car, he looks at both of them through the rear mirror. “Not a word about this with daddy.”

“No,” they say at once. Nobody wants to tell Blaine someone rummaged in his drawer, after all.

“And, Harper, this is not over,” Leo adds, making her cringe visibly.

One week later, they're hanging out in the living room. The twins are miraculously playing together without trying to tear each other's eyes out over some toy, and even Timmy is with them, reading some book about livestock. Blaine comes downstairs, frowning. “Leo?”

“Yes?” Leo doesn't look up from the new chapter of his book is trying to rewrite following his editor Mark's instructions.

“Do you know why my Warbler ring is upside down in its box?”

Leo freezes, and the twins too. “I don't know?” He tries, but there's no point in that. Blaine can read him like an open book, and Leo is usually a book Blaine knows by heart. 

“Do I wanna know?” He asks, but then he sighs because he knows the answer. “No, I don't.”  
He learned early on that in this family some stories he needs to know, some other might be better left untold.


End file.
